The Last Mile (Amos Decker 2)

“How can we both be wrong?” said Jamison.

Decker pointed to the floor of the open closet. “Her running shoes are there. And so are her workout clothes. It’s bucketing outside and has been all night. The shoes and clothes aren’t even damp or mud-splattered. She wouldn’t have run in this weather anyway. There aren’t any paths and the road outside gets busy with traffic. Not very safe.”

“Okay, so she was attacked while she was sleeping,” said Jamison. “Meaning I was right.”

Decker pointed to the door and then the window. “No forced entry on either. The cops confirmed that. A key was needed to get in. The motel office has been checked. These are old-fashioned locks with real keys. There are no duplicates.”

Jamison was not giving up easily. “Well, maybe they got one from the cleaning staff. They must have masters.”

Decker moved forward near the bed and said, “Look at the table that was knocked over.”

They stood next to him and looked down at it.

Mars said, “It was the one next to the bed. It had a lamp on it. The lamp got knocked over and smashed when the table went down. So what?”

“Look at the table leg.”

They did so.

Decker said, “There’s a piece of the lamp embedded in it.”

Jamison examined the leg and nodded in u

nderstanding even as Mars still looked confused. Jamison said, “If the table was knocked over in a struggle the lamp would have flown off and landed well past the table. There is no way the lamp would have hit the table so hard a piece would embed itself in the wood.”

“Exactly,” said Decker. He pointed to the drywall. “And look there.”

They stared at where he was pointing.

Mars said, “There’s nothing to see.”

Jamison shook her head. “No, Amos is right. There are no marks on the drywall. Yet the table is set next to the bed. If there was a struggle the table would almost certainly have been knocked back against the wall and a mark would have been left.” She looked at Decker. “This was all staged. The table was turned upside down and the lamp smashed over it. Someone knocked on her door and she answered it. She was taken and the room later wrecked to make it look like a fight had happened.”

“That’s how I see it,” agreed Decker.

“But why would they do that?” asked Mars.

“Because they didn’t want us to know that Davenport knew the person who took her,” replied Decker.

Jamison snapped her fingers and said, “At that hour she wouldn’t have let anyone in her room she didn’t know. That’s why there was no forced entry.”

“Right,” said Decker, his gaze still swiveling around the room.

Mars said admiringly, “Damn, you figure all that out ’cause you got a perfect memory?”

“No, I figured all that out because I was a cop for twenty years and know what to look for.”

Mars looked at Jamison. “And you’re good at this too.”

She smiled. “Amos has rubbed off on me.”

“No,” said Decker. “You see things, Alex. Sometimes you see more than me.”

“But Decker, Davenport didn’t know anybody in this town,” noted Jamison.

“Well, obviously she did. And it was someone she trusted.”

Mars said, “So it comes back to why take her?”

Jamison leaned back against the wall and said, “Do you think they’ll try to find out what we’ve learned by…”

Decker stared at her. “Beating her? Torturing her?”

Jamison paled but nodded.

“I think it far more likely that they’ll use her as a bargaining chip,” observed Decker.

Mars looked puzzled. “Bargaining chip? For what?”

“For you.”

CHAPTER

42

I SHOULD NEVER have left.”

Bogart stared across the table at Decker.

The men were sitting inside an office of a small building the FBI had turned into a makeshift command center.

Bogart and Milligan had flown in with a half dozen other agents. They were in the other part of the building working away on trying to locate Lisa Davenport.

“You had no choice,” said Decker.

“Everybody has a choice,” retorted Bogart, who was looking distraught. His tie was unknotted, his shirt wrinkled, and his hair mussed.

“Realistic choice, then,” countered Decker. “And even if you had been here, the same thing probably would have happened.”

“We can’t find anyone here that she would have known well enough to let into her room at that hour. Any ideas on that?”

“It’s possible that she knew someone that we didn’t know she knew.”

“If they are using her as leverage we can expect a communication.”

Decker nodded. “The problem will be the exchange. That’s always the problem with scenarios like this.”

Bogart said, “You don’t think we’ll get her back alive?”

“She saw who took her. She knew the person.”

Bogart sighed and slumped back in his chair. “And she can’t be allowed to tell us who that is.”

“The odds are certainly against it.”

“Who do you think is behind this?”

“There’s more than one.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“Motivations and actions tell us a lot. We have irreconcilable motivations and actions. That means there’s more than one player out there.”

“Something changed,” said Bogart. “Mars was in prison for twenty years and nothing happened.”

“What changed was he was going to be executed. He had never gotten that close to the death chamber before. That was the catalyst for them to act.”

“To pay off Montgomery?”

“Yes.”

“So which ‘faction’ did that?”

“I don’t know. It could be one or the other at this point.”

“They want what they think he knows. The stuff in the safe deposit box that his father took.”

“That’s the golden ring. His father took it and put it somewhere. They may think the son knows.”

Bogart said, “What are the irreconcilable motives and actions?”

“The party that wants the information could have let Melvin be executed. The information hadn’t surfaced for twenty years. They could assume it was lost. By getting Melvin out of jail they gave him an opportunity to go get it, assuming he knows where it is. Then they hope to be there when he does and grab it?” Decker shook his head. “That’s a huge risk. So huge that they wouldn’t have done it. They would have let sleeping dogs lie.”

“But then who got Mars out of prison?”

“The other party.”

“But why?”